AP to soon submit Vizag, Tirupati IT investment region reports to Centre

To earmark 12,000 acre each for proposed ITIR

The Andhra Pradesh government is in the process of submitting to the Centre the detailed project reports (DPRs) on the IT Investment Regions (ITIRs) being proposed in Visakhapatnam and Tirupati in the next one or two months.

“While the DPR for the Vizag project is already in place, our consultants will be holding meetings with the stakeholders and the districts administrations of Anantapur and Chittoor during October 24-26 to formalise the initial report on the second project,” state ICT minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah told Business Standard.

The state government is planning to earmark a landbank of 12,000 acre each for the Vizag and Anantapur-Chittoor ITIRs. It has roped in PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for these projects. PwC is also the consultant for the Hyderabad ITIR, whose DPR was recently approved by the central government. The Hyderabad ITIR, a self-contained integrated knowledge cluster to promote IT, ITeS and electronics sectors, would come up on 202 sq kilometre.

It is expected to attract investments to the tune of Rs 2 lakh crore, generate revenues of Rs 3.11 lakh crore, besides creating direct employment to 1.5 million people over the next 25 years.

“Phase-I of the Hyderabad ITIR would be completed by 2018 and Phase-II in 20 years from then,” the state IT minister said.

Stating that the state’s animation and gaming policy was ready and  would be cleared in the next Cabinet meeting, Lakshmaiah said tenders were called for the Rs 200-crore GAME (Gaming, Animation, Media and Entertainment) City planned at Rayadurgam on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

“The GAME City will be coming up on 30 acre. It will have a 60,000 sft incubation centre to start with. It is a matter of time to lay the foundation stone for this project,” he added.

Earlier, addressing an interactive workshop on ITIR here on Tuesday, Lakshmaiah said his department had embarked on an initiative to make available short message service (SMS) in Telugu.

“The Android version of the Telugu SMS software is ready. We are awaiting a nod from Apple for the iOS version, which we expect to receive in a week or two,” he said.

While agreeing that his ICT department had tasted some ‘failures’ too in terms of competing with Gurgaon and Gujarat, where one multinational was planning to set up its fab (semiconductor) manufacturing plant, he said he would pursue it.